"Final" Thoughts On Haiti

Ask anyone who has returned from Haiti and you'll hear the same thing: it becomes difficult to think about anything else. For someone like me who feeds on unsolvable problems, the obsession redoubles. Here's the paradox: Haiti is by far the dirtiest, most tragic, most dangerous place I have even been and the whole time I was there I couldn't wait to get back home.  I saw a crowd form around a freshly shot body near the airport, I saw a man bathing in raw sewage, I saw a child drinking out of the same sewer, I heard gunshots too numerous to count, I saw faces frozen in panic and hunger. All this and nothing a rational person would call hope for better days to come. Yet after recovering for a day or two, I began wondering how soon I could get back there. What is this madness? 

I am not alone. A friend of mine who has been several times knew exactly what I was talking about. And perhaps the only people this makes sense to are the ones who have been there, like Anthony Bourdain (who, in one hour of "No Reservations," nailed this strange attraction). I hung out with several ex-pats when I was there, some of whom have lived there for 30 years, and they refuse to live anywhere else. 


I am almost positive I will never move to Haiti, but why this pull to go back? For one thing, even in the face of all the death, in its culture and in its daily life, you are very aware you are alive when you are in Haiti. I've been to numerous countries and even in the worst parts, I felt safe, guarded from the dangers, a tourist. Not so Haiti. From the moment you get off the plane and make your way down the airport road (one of the most dangerous thoroughfares in Port Au Prince), you are in trouble--I don't care how many security guards you have with you. And if you're like me and shoot someone's picture who never gave you permission (as I did, stupidly), you just upped the ante and pray the car starts moving before he gets to the window. Like my friend Ralph, who finds it necessary to jump out of airplanes, the higher the stakes, the more alive I felt. 


Still people come and go from Haiti without dying all the time, so there must be something more to it. I think it hit me when I heard music and celebration down in Port Au Prince one night. Here are the poorest people in the world, people who live in the crosshairs of every natural and social disaster the world can cook up, and they are celebrating...what exactly? I have no clue, but it seems like a very serious matter for me to find out.